


Safe With Me

by delina



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Medical Experimentation, Mind Control, dubcon friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 07:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16739596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delina/pseuds/delina
Summary: Joseph Oda escapes Mobius post-TEW1, but not alone.





	Safe With Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Croik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Croik/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide and best of holidays! Hope you enjoy!

The night sky was starless, smog and clouds hiding even the moon. Colored lights reflected on the windshield from the last city buildings that fell away as the car sped along the highway in the dark. Joseph gripped the steering wheel, gaze borne down on the long road ahead: inky blackness punctuated only by the parallel paths of lines and dashes that made up the lanes, and as though looking at a written word for too long lost its actual meaning. Joseph’s mind was as blank as the deep black surrounding them. A few street lights marked the last city exit ramp, and illuminated the flax hair and thin silhouette of the passenger in the seat beside him, face turned away.

If Joseph just focused on the road he could reclaim how it used to feel when he’d take a drive to clear his head, sick of being cooped up on a long night. If he couldn’t hold on to that, if he allowed himself even a moment to ponder his current fate and predicament, his stomach started to turn. He gripped harder, steering wheel leather biting into his palms. His breath caught in his throat. In his peripheral vision a young face with cold pale eyes turned to regard him silently.

“I’m fine,” Joseph said reflexively, startling himself. Letting out the words forced him to breathe again. He cleared his throat, licked his lips, scooped up that sanity he was fighting to hold white-knuckled. Even though there didn’t seem to be a soul on the road in sight ahead or behind, he asked: “All clear?”

“Yes.” Cool and final was the reply, without a hint of the tension that kept skittering through Joseph.

“Good.” Even to himself his tone was off, manic, tipped up at the edge. Get it together. He berated himself, and at least that voice sounded normal. He flicked on the radio to fill the silence, requiring a few attempts to find the power on the unfamiliar console. The presets shuffled and intermixed jarringly; snippets of familiar pop songs, a radio announcer sleepy-voiced, pre-recorded celebrity gossip, a weather report on tomorrow’s rain. All mundane, all normal. No breaking news, no bulletin of import, no crime, not even the crackle of a police spanner sending out an assignment. It was as if nothing had happened at all.

Certainly Joseph didn’t expect that a string of mental hospital murders and all its dirty aftermath would necessarily be broadcast to the world, but he found himself hoping for it. It would make everything he went through more real, more grounded, more than just a jumble in his head. He wanted more than pangs and bruises to prove what he had been through, he wanted someone to corroborate. His passenger should have been evidence enough, but he was so quiet as to be ghost-like, and Joseph kept worrying he was just a figment of his own terrorized mind.

He could barely piece together what had happened, even now, with the space and time to think. It was hard to know when it had even stopped being reality, let alone the point at which it had started again. All his memories were punctuated by the smell of blood and pain, all in-between falling away like the tendrils of a dream upon waking. He remembered endless gore and screams of agony, bodies contorted and deformed, rooms and hallways out of time and space at dizzying angles, a fear so sharp it liquefied his insides, the cold of a revolver in his grip, and a final burning in his chest, all of which maybe never actually existed. After that hazy awareness bubbled up like breaching the surface of water again and again- light brighter than his eyes could adjust to, indiscernible reflections off frosted glass, the beeps of medical equipment, a multitude of blurry unknown faces, wires and tubes taped down and running into his body. He remembered the red on his skin as he ripped out those wires, a spotty trail of red on pristine white tiles in his wake. He was driven to stand by an unseen force like a shuddering marionette moving without thought. He had fled down hallways and corridors he had never seen but somehow knew, to find that presence which called to him, to pull latches and unplug machines and reach within one to encircle a small hand with his own. His memory sharpened clearer from there, of flashing warning lights and buzzers, of slipping in pools of blood on bare feet as he was tugged along behind a slender figure. The screams of well-dressed men and women echoed as they cowered, cried, or threw themselves at walls or medical implements or scratched at their faces until they couldn’t make sound anymore. Then further, sharper recollections; reclaimed clothes and stolen keys, the comforting scent of leather and new car, the incredible brilliance of a sunset over the highway that brought at tear to his eye at the beauty.

It all felt distant and surreal, even now. Every time Joseph blinked there was a curdling hope that upon opening he would finally be in his own bed and everything would return to the way it had been. This bad dream refused to end, and a ghost was his copilot. Ruvik. He first heard the name uttered by his partner without the knowledge of its true meaning. Now the name echoed in his bones, slotted underneath his skin, buzzed in the back of his mind. He didn’t think he could dig it out from inside himself.

The radio settled on quiet instrumentals, the station shuffling stopped by a slender pale finger that was not his own. The scrambled question in his mind of whether he was actually alone in the car or not was answered with exterior finality. The twist in Joseph’s guts expanded to a shudder in his elbows, to a tremor in his leg he fought against.

He was in the presence of something very dangerous. It was something, at his core, he knew shouldn’t exist, and held no place in logic or reality. Joseph’s eyes darted from the confines of the inky black road to the sloping wilderness alongside and the flimsy guard rail separating road from valley, quickly calculating. He could do what Mobius’ scientists wouldn’t, and rid the world of a monster. Joseph jerked the wheel hard right and pressed the pedal to the floor, car roaring to life over the quiet radio. The ghost beside him snapped to attention, expression open shock more than the rage he’d anticipated.

_“Joseph!”_ He could have sworn he heard Sebastian’s voice.

Suddenly Joseph’s foot slammed the brake and the tires squealed with burning rubber as the car careened sideways across two lanes, spinning. It faced wrong-way on the road before it stopped, driver’s side scraping the guard rail but stopping short of the force to go over. Joseph’s pounding heart matched the hum of the overworked engine, until a thin hand turned the key in the ignition and killed it, leaving only silence in the spaces between his panicked breaths. 

“I didn’t save you so you could kill us both,” Ruvik said in a voice that didn’t quite match Joseph’s nightmares, though the scathing delivery was similar. “I assumed your suicidal tendencies were elevated from exposure to the STEM and not a persistent personality trait,” he muttered, almost to himself. The shudder had returned to Joseph’s limbs; that fear crept back in, and clawing up past that a need to escape and survive. He pawed at the car door handle, but even popping it loose it would not open— the guard rail snug against the door prevented it, and he was trapped. “Your keen instinct to survive has served us well so far, and I prefer that to this sudden nihilism.”

Before he could think of pushing past to the passenger door, Joseph was shoved back in his seat, the weight of Ruvik’s small stolen frame pressing down on him as he climbed into his lap. Joseph tried to look anywhere else, but could not prevent himself from locking eyes with his captor and rescuer. Pale eyes full of calculating coldness shot through his mind past his natural animal impulses to sudden numb clarity. Ruvik searched over his face with those eyes and Joseph felt he was an open book being rifled through carelessly.

“What would your partner think?”

The question stuck Joseph’s heart in his throat, ashamed heat blossoming in his face. He could easily imagine Sebastian’s reaction, could almost see the disgusted curl of his lip and the disappointment in his eyes like it was a video played out in front of him. Sebastian’s half-hearted shrug and shake of his head, a common reaction whether Joseph had been found lacking in some pop culture reference or had been nigh to committing a cardinal sin for lack of self-preservation. Such was the man’s great depth of emotional expression, and yet it always cut Joseph to the core. Why he cared so much or hung on every word or gesture vexed him endlessly. It was historically an internal question Joseph refused to address directly, for intrinsic fear of what he might find.

The chuckle that sounded from Ruvik held genuine entertainment and also derision. Joseph felt hands settle on his shoulders, smooth up his neck and tangle in the back of his hair; he realized absently he could not break eye contact or move.

“Fear is a powerful motivating emotion,” Ruvik said. “One of my favorites to research, in fact. Too much fear, however, can prevent proper cognitive function and cause extensive physical stress unnecessarily.” His fingers felt as if they were in Joseph’s brain more than his hair. “You need to relax, Joseph,” he went on, and Joseph could swear he heard Sebastian’s easy voice mirroring the words. “You’re safe with me.”

“Okay,” Joseph found himself saying, tone wavering around the knot in his throat. Even though there was still that inkling that something wasn’t right, tension dissipated from between his brows and shoulders and he let out a long sigh.

“We’re going to take care of one another from now on.” Ruvik said with finality, so close Joseph could feel puffs of warm breath on his face. The words settled in his chest and solidified, all Joseph’s fears and anxiety replaced with protectiveness. The same feeling of having Sebastian’s back, watching out for him, their friendly camaraderie and the satisfaction it gave him vibrated at the forefront of his mind. He quirked the barest of smiles.

Metal against metal scraped, breaking the reverie: the car started rolling gently down the roadside, grinding the guard rail as it went. Joseph’s relaxed leg had relinquished the brake, and he pressed it to the floor again before he finally put the car in park.

All at once Joseph was acutely aware of Ruvik in his lap, and he turned a grim expression on him until he returned to his own seat— Ruvik’s awkward too-young limbs shuffled across the middle console and he resettled with a seat-belt click. That hazy disassociated fog returned to Joseph’s mind as the warmth of Ruvik’s body heat fled. What had he been saying or thinking? It was only the realization that the car was facing into potential oncoming traffic that forced him to act. With a swear he started the car and turned it back onto the road properly.

With a deep breath, Joseph’s nerves started to settle, his goals and priorities finally clear in his mind. The only thing that mattered was getting away from the prying eyes of Mobius, and making sure Ruvik was safe.


End file.
